Chances are you do. Government debt (treasuries, bills, bonds, notes) are a major component of most investment strategies. Is owning government debt a good idea? It might reduce risk in your portfolio. Some people like the low-risk return. However, investing in government debt comes at a price. It helps to fund some very bad things; things that you might not feel good about supporting with your money. Also, the only way the government can repay the debt (principle + interest) is to tax your neighbors, friends, and family.

Personally, I think there are better ways to earn a return on the market without forcing others pay for my investment decisions. I choose not to invest in government debt and would encourage others to do the same.

Writing in 1870, Lysander Spooner was less kind about people who choose to profit by investing in government debt:

"Who, then, created these debts, in the name of "the United States"? Why, at most, only a few persons, calling themselves "members of Congress," etc., who pretended to represent "the people of the United States," but who really represented only a secret band of robbers and murderers, who wanted money to carry on the robberies and murders in which they were then engaged; and who intended to extort from the future people of the United States, by robbery and threats of murder (and real murder, if that should prove necessary), the means to pay these debts.....They lend money to be expended in robbing, enslaving, and murdering their fellow men, solely because, on the whole, such loans pay better than any others. .... This business of lending blood-money is one of the most thoroughly sordid, cold-blooded, and criminal that was ever carried on, to any considerable extent, amongst human beings. It is like lending money to slave traders, or to common robbers and pirates, to be repaid out of their plunder. And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived." - Lysander Spooner

What do you think? Are you helping to fund robbery and even murder by investing in government debt?

Does libertarianism have airtight definitions and foundations? Are there limitations to the liberty maxim? In an essay titled The Ways of John Gray, Daniel B. Klein writes:

"Libertarianism is a reform agenda cursed also by its own strength. The extent to which sensible libertarians regard the liberty maxim as well defined, widely applicable, and widely desirable is much greater than the extent to which those in other ideological camps regard their leading maxims as well defined, widely applicable, and widely desirable. In a sense, it is a curse to be the most in anything, because it arouses accusations of being entire. The cogency of the liberty maxim in the libertarian's mind often leads others to think that he regards it as an axiom that is always clearly defined, everywhere applicable, and always desirable. Critics such as Gray condemn libertarianism for pretending to possess airtight definitions, absolutes, and foundations, and therefore they attempt to dispose of libertarianism on formalistic grounds rather than engaging the substantive arguments offered for the reform agenda.

Libertarians might deter slights and hectoring by emphasizing the limitations of the liberty maxim and expressing its virtues in comparative terms."

I would argue that advocates for liberty need not eschew its limitations. Liberty is not Utopia. Likewise, critics should be careful not to reject libertarianism outright because it falls short of some Utopian ideal. There is no such thing as a perfect solution. What we want is incremental progress in the direction of human flourishing. That is something only the free market of voluntary exchange can offer.

Explore the Liberty Library to learn how the market process might be able to address some of our most difficult challenges.

In The Economics and Ethics of Private Property, Hans-Hermann Hoppe explains that taxes "...invariably reduce production, the consumers standard of living, obstructs wealth formation, and creates relative impoverishment." Let's think about why that is the case.

"Taxation is a coercive, non-contractual transfer of definite physical assets (nowadays mostly, but not exclusively money), and the value embodied in them, from a person or group of persons who first held these assets and who could have derived an income from further holding them, to another, who now possesses them and no derives an income from so doing.” - p 35

Think about the ways in which a person can acquire a valuable good? Hoppe explains there are four and only four ways:1.Original Appropriation Through Homesteading2.Production (mix of one's labor and previously appropriated goods)3.Voluntary Exchange4.Forcefully Expropriation / Theft

Option 4, of which taxation is a part, decreases the marginal utility of activities 1-3 and increases the marginal utility of consumption and leisure:

“Taxation raises the time preference...in the direction of an existence of living hand to mouth. Just increase taxation enough and you will have mankind reduced to the level of barbaric animal beasts.” p 36

“Contrary to any claim of a systematically “neutral” effect of taxation on production, the consequence of any such shortening of roundabout methods of production is a lower output produced. The price that invariably must be paid for taxation, and for every increase in taxation, is a coercively lowered productivity that in turn reduces the standard of living in terms of valuable assets provided for future consumption. Every act of taxation necessarily exerts a push away from more highly capitalized, more productive processes in the direction of a hand-to-mouth-existence.” p 42